"If Michelle Jackson could have spoke from the grave, she would have told everybody Eddie Lloyd didn't do it," Mr. Lloyd said after he was freed.

Despite the lack of physical evidence, Mr. Lloyd was convicted in 1985 based heavily on a taped confession he made to Detroit police while he was in a mental hospital.

ALABAMA

City near bottom in pay for police

MOBILE A nationwide survey of more than 420 law enforcement agencies ranks the Mobile Police Department near the bottom in most pay comparisons, the Mobile Register reports.

The numbers support the assertion of Police Chief Sam Cochran during a recent city budget hearing, when he said that the city is losing officers because Mobile's pay is not on par with other law enforcement agencies.

The survey is conducted by the Oregon-based Labor Relations Information System, a for-profit organization that produces the materials for police and firefighters, their union representatives, management and attorneys, according to its Web site and a representative.

ARIZONA

State to tighten charter school rules

PHOENIX This year, Arizona will demand that charter school applicants sign more legal promises, attend training and explain their business credentials.

But the toughest hurdle will be getting approval from an independent review committee of successful charter operators.

The charter school movement has 461 charter campuses, more than any other state, officials said.

CALIFORNIA

Students beat up policeman in class

VALLE VISTA It was a class where children were encouraged to be physical, to show how they would punch, kick and scratch any person trying to kidnap them.

More than 150 children used California Highway Patrol Officer Eric Nolte as their punching bag as part of a recent self-defense class at Valle Vista Community Center. The class was one of four sessions on preventing child abduction and sexual assault.

The class comes after recent high-profile child kidnappings in California. In the self-defense class, Officer Nolte wore a plastic helmet and shoulder, knee and arm pads. He invited the children to hit him. Some children were hesitant, while others lunged into Officer Nolte with punches and kicks that left the children out of breath.

COLORADO

Security breach closes airport

DENVER Denver International Airport was shut down for 90 minutes yesterday morning, emptying all three concourses and forcing several thousand travelers to go through another screening.

Spokesman Steve Snyder said a passenger had gotten through security without a complete screening. The Transportation Security Administration did not return calls asking for details of the security breach.

DELAWARE

Family gets blessing times four

WILMINGTON Kevin and Dawn Dodds had almost given up their dream of having children. But the Milltown couple who tried for seven years to have a baby now have four.

She and her four daughters, Cassidy, Abigail, Kailee and Emma, were in fair condition Sunday night, a hospital spokesman told the News-Journal. Three of the babies weighed 2 pounds 10 ounces, and one weighed 2 pounds 15 ounces.

"As soon as we got married, we wanted to start a family," Mr. Dodds said. "It's been a long time coming, but who knew that we'd have four?"

FLORIDA

Hispanics celebrate cultures at pageant

PALM BEACH A year ago, 16-year-old Silvana Lacava didn't know what it meant to be Hispanic. She was just a girl from Montevideo, Uruguay, on her way to a new life in a new country.

Now she will represent Palm Beach County's Hispanic community for the next year as the winner of the 2002 Miss Hispanidad pageant, the Post reported.

"It was when I joined the pageant that I came to the realization of what it really means to be Hispanic," Miss Lacava said. That realization is something that happens to Latin American people and even Spaniards who come to this country and are suddenly lumped into this group, mainly identifiable by language.

GEORGIA

Woman sets fire that kills baby

DECATUR A woman who meant to burn her boyfriend's clothes started a blaze that swept through the house and killed her 3-year-old daughter, authorities said.

Jillian Smiley, 31, was charged with murder and arson Sunday and jailed without bail. Authorities said she set fire to the clothes in anger, and the blaze gutted the house.

Her daughter Icesys Smith was taking a nap before the fire began Saturday, according to officials. Miss Smiley, her boyfriend, Marcus Smith, and her six other children, ages 1 to 9, escaped to the front yard.

Mr. Smith and a neighbor tried to rescue Icesys, but they could not get back into the house because the smoke was too intense. At Sunday night's hearing, Miss Smiley wept as a judge read the charges and set a preliminary hearing for Oct. 7.

KENTUCKY

Cities lack pollution plans

LOUISVILLE With a federal deadline approaching in six months, several small cities and counties in Kentucky haven't drafted plans to reduce pollution in storm-water runoff, the Courier-Journal reported.

Under the Clean Water Act, small communities must submit five-year plans detailing how they will control runoff and maintain drainage ditches. They have until March 2003 or they could be fined up to $25,000 a day.

LOUISIANA

Ex-governor expects prison time

BATON ROUGE Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards said yesterday he expects to be ordered to federal prison within a month while he keeps fighting his racketeering and fraud convictions.

"If I go, I will obey the rules, I will serve my time," said Edwards, 75. "I will hope to live long enough to get out."

It was his first public statement since Friday, when a federal appeals court upheld his May 2000 conviction. He was found guilty in a scheme to extort millions of dollars from businessman hoping to get lucrative riverboat casino licenses from the state during and after his fourth and final term in office, which ended in early 1996.

MASSACHUSETTS

Report: Gun owners not told of expiration

NORTHBORO The agency charged with keeping the records of every licensed gun owner in the state failed to notify almost 750,000 gun owners that their Firearms Identification Cards would expire prematurely, according to a report.

The report, released by the Massachusetts House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, said the cards' expiration dates were affected by the new requirement of the Massachusetts Gun Control Act of 1998. It said only 43 percent of the 1,280,643 cardholders received mailings about the expiration.

MISSOURI

College shrugs off 'unhappiest' tag

ROLLA R.J. Agee says the University of Missouri-Rolla is a great place, no matter what you read about it.

Citing "dungeon dorms," bad food and poor community relations, the Princeton Review's latest college survey says Mr. Agee and his classmates should be the unhappiest students in the country.

But many who attend the school, where 70 percent of the students study engineering, just scoff.

"A lot of people don't understand it. The facts have no basis. It's a joke," said Mr. Agee, a senior and the student council president.

The review, which surveyed 100,000 students nationwide, placed Missouri-Rolla last in the quality-of-life ranking of its "Best 345 Colleges" guide the bottom of the heap in a section called "Purgatory."

OHIO

Boycotting case dismissed in court

CINCINNATI A Hamilton County judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by an arts group that accused black boycotters of costing $86,000 in lost ticket sales.

The Cincinnati Arts Association filed the suit against the Coalition for a Just Cincinnati in March shortly after entertainer Bill Cosby cancelled a scheduled performance. The suit says Mr. Cosby backed out after receiving a letter from the coalition, requesting he heed the boycott.

Boycott advocates say they are protesting racial inequalities in the city.

"Speech that is political expression is granted one of the highest, if not the highest, First Amendment protection," Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas Nurre wrote in the decision.

OKLAHOMA

Murrah victims feel slighted

OKLAHOMA CITY The day hijacked planes tore through the World Trade Center towers, Oklahoma City bombing victims relived some of the pain they have harbored for seven years.

Within months, another emotion was beginning to stir. Some Oklahoma City bombing victims are feeling neglected nearly a year after the terrorist attacks because Congress did not include them in a compensation fund with an expected average payout of $1.65 million for relatives of the September 11 victims.

"The way I look at it, a terrorist attack is a terrorist attack," said Mr. McKinney, whose wife, Linda, died in the attack. "People just don't realize that there wasn't money given out after the bombing."

SOUTH CAROLINA

Cable barriers seen as saving lives

COLUMBIA Cable barriers along South Carolina's interstate highways have saved at least 100 lives since they were installed in December 2000, the state Transportation Department says.

The $40 million program has installed barriers in the medians of more than 300 miles of interstate highway. The agency estimates about half of the 1,001 hits could have resulted in deadly crossover crashes.

TENNESSEE

'Reign of terror' existed at post office

OAK RIDGE For years, black employees at the post office here were routinely subjected to racist insults and slurs as well as physical threats from a supervisor, a judge says.

The judge's ruling stems from what he calls a "reign of terror" by that supervisor and includes the awarding of one of the biggest-ever Equal Employment Opportunity Commission judgments in the federal sector.

The supervisor at the center of the complaint was Roger Lee Asbury, who was demoted from his position as supervisor of customer services after an investigation into the accusations. He has since retired.

In his ruling, the administrative judge called Mr. Asbury "a racist gone amok in the Oak Ridge Post Office." The judge said postmasters and officers in charge of the post office "looked the other way, or worse yet, joined Mr. Asbury in finding such racial and threatening conduct amusing."

TEXAS

Twins' father's visa may take some time

DALLAS The father of 1-year-old Egyptian conjoined twins awaiting separation surgery could face delays in traveling to the United States because of new immigration rules imposed after September 11, officials say.

Ibrahim Mohammed Ibrahim is scheduled to apply for a visa with the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Sept. 2. If approved, the visa would typically take up to three weeks to be issued.

But young foreign men hoping to travel to the United States now must get their visa applications approved in Washington, D.C. and 30-year-old Mr. Ibrahim falls in that category.

That could hold up his arrival for a long time, said officials at the Dallas-based World Craniofacial Foundation, which brought the twins to the United States.

VERMONT

Woman dies diving in lake

BURLINGTON A New York woman died Sunday morning during a diving class off Colchester Point in Lake Champlain.

The U.S. Coast Guard in Burlington responded to the 10 a.m. call just west of Sunset Island along the Colchester Shoal where Victory Sports of Colchester was holding an advanced diving class, the Free Press reports. The nine divers were in about 85 feet of water near the Phoenix, a popular wreck for divers to investigate.

The woman, Darla Grasso, 51, of Grand Island, N.Y., had just surfaced when she began having breathing difficulties, Petty Officer Norm Santti said. Two other divers attempted to revive her before the Coast Guard joined them.

Miss Grasso was pronounced dead at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington. Officer Santti said he did not know what happened during the dive.

WISCONSIN

Parish learns reason for priest's removal

MILWAUKEE Parishioners at Blessed Sacrament Parish reacted Sunday with prayer, sadness, acceptance and frustration to the announcement at weekend Masses that their pastor's departure involved past sexual contact with a minor.

The church had said nothing for more than a month about the sudden departure of the Rev. James N. Jablonowski.

"I guess I was worried because no one was saying anything about the reason for his leave of absence," said Annamarie Pleier, who attended the 9 a.m. Mass on Sunday with her husband and infant. "I thought the archdiocese handled it the best way they can."

Mrs. Pleier credited Father Jablonowski with leading the effort to build a new gymnasium in celebration of the church's 75th anniversary.

"I don't think it would have been built without him," she told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

WYOMING

Wildfire forces dozens of evacuations

LANDER Firefighters guarded ranch houses yesterday against a growing wildfire in central Wyoming that forced residents to evacuate dozens of homes and several ranches.

No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported from the Pass Creek fire, which started Saturday and jumped to 5,120 acres by yesterday afternoon. The cause of the blaze had not been determined.

Flames were about a mile from ranch houses, where fire engine crews were standing by to provide protection, said Bob Budd, manager of the sprawling Red Canyon Ranch, operated by the Nature Conservancy.